The death-bolts deadliest the thinned files along,
Even where the thickest of War's tempest lowered,
They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard![1]
XXX.
There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee,
And mine were nothing, had I such to give:
But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,
And saw around me the wide field revive
With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring[2]
Come forth her work of gladness to contrive,
With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring.N6
- ↑ [The Hon. Frederick Howard (1785-1815), third son of Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle, fell late in the evening of the 18th of June, in a final charge of the left square of the French Guard, in which Vivian brought up Howard's hussars against the French. Neither French infantry nor cavalry gave way, and as the Hanoverians fired but did not charge, a desperate combat ensued, in which Howard fell and many of the 10th were killed.—Waterloo: The Downfall of the First Napoleon, G. Hooper, 1861, p. 236.
Southey, who had visited the field of Waterloo, September, 1815, in his Poet's Pilgrimage (iii. 49), dedicates a pedestrian stanza to his memory—
"Here from the heaps who strewed the fatal plain
Was Howard's corse by faithful hands conveyed;
And not to be confounded with the slain,
Here in a grave apart with reverence laid,
Till hence his honoured relics o'er the seas
Were borne to England, where they rest in peace."] - ↑ [Autumn had been beforehand with spring in the work of renovation.
